To Sleep, Perchance to Dream
by Lila2
Summary: Sark reflects on his weakness


Author: Lila  
Title: "To Sleep, Perchance to Dream"  
Spoiler: None  
  
Author's Note:  
Okay, so this started out as a sequel of sorts to "Barenaked," but evolved into an entirely different thing. I'm still working on another Sarkneyish thing, but I had to do this first. Thank you for all your wonderful responses and encouragement. I hope you enjoy!  
  
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"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." - Verbal Kint, "The Usual Suspects"  
  
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I can't remember the last time I dreamed. Sleep has never been something I've given much importance to, but lately this little thing has been bothering me. Every night is an empty void of black, a forgotten mirage of lost memories and dark desires. I wake up in a cold sweat, my chest heaving and my eyes wide and my mind a stormy nightmare of lost hope and empty promises. I don't have to remember my dreams to know they're real.  
  
I used to dream when I was a boy, memories of a shattered life and a broken past. There are reasons I'm the way I am today. I wasn't born Mr. Sark; things had to happen to get me there. Dreams are an alternate version of reality, a sleeping life, and anything can happen. Good things can happen, happy things, things that don't exist in reality. And when I wake up and realize those things weren't real, it's worse then any tortured memory of my past. Sometimes I wonder if that's why I stopped dreaming, because I want to forget things too painful to remember.   
  
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I try not to think about my past. It brought me nothing but pain and anguish and those aren't things I want to remember. I focus on the present, the man I am today, although I can't say he's someone I'm proud to be. You know the monster that lives under the bed when you're a kid? The one thing that makes you afraid of the dark, scared to leave your bed when the lights go out? The eerie creature lurking in the dark, haunting your childhood dreams?  
  
Imagine the monster doesn't fade into obscurity with age. Imagine he's living, breathing, flesh and bone, watching you, waiting for your moment of weakness. There have been too many times to count, right before I put a bullet between a man's eyes, when he's looked at me and seen his worst nightmare. Because that's what I am, a childhood monster come to life, come to stage one last battle, to finally get the little boy cowering under his covers in the dead of night.  
  
Irina would be proud. After all, she's the one who created the monster, took a scared little boy and made him into something to be feared. I can't remember a time when she wasn't with me, a time when my life wasn't shaped by death and blood and tears. But that's the course of the life I've chosen, the consequences of a pact I made when I was seven-years-old and took the hand of a woman with icy eyes and a frozen heart.  
  
Not that I knew better. I was a dirty street rat with little more then the clothes on my back and a talent for picking pockets. She took that talent and turned it into something more. I never thought I'd be an assassin, a spy, a killer--whatever you want to call me, but what boy dreams of growing up with smoke in his hair and blood on his hands? I certainly didn't, but that's who I am; death is as much a part of me as breathing.  
  
Most of the time it doesn't bother me, I simply regard it as a consequence of my job, but fate has a funny way of catching up with you. Irina says I'm lucky that I don't dream, that I can forget the faceless men whose lives I've stolen, but it doesn't work that way. It's more then a dream, more then a reminder of my crimes, its penance for a sin for which I'll never be absolved. They come to me in the dead of night, the faces of those whose lives I've stolen. They never talk or accuse or blame, simply stare at me with hollow eyes and never let me forget what I took from them. They started coming to me around the time I stopped dreaming.   
  
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In many ways my life echoes the dreams I cling to. It's cold, empty, without a trace of warmth. I've never been a man who could afford the finer things in life, not the things that matter anyway. I have all the fine wine and expensive clothes and toys a man could ever want, but none of the things that really count. I take pleasure in other's pain, laugh in the face of their heartbreak, ignore the damage I inflict on their lives.   
  
Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to die. Late at night, when it's just me alone with my thoughts, I think about all the times I've cheated death, and wonder what would happen if things were different, if I were the one to die instead. Is death easy, like a cool Chardonay, or rough like a bullet tearing through layers of flesh and bone? In that moment, right before I take my last breath, would I even know it's the end? Would anyone miss me if I were gone?  
  
I don't think anyone would. After all, who can miss a person that doesn't really exist? Mr. Sark isn't real. He's a creation, a mirage, a sense of déjà vu right before he pumps you full of bullets. No one knows my real name, not even my maker. It's ironic, for a man who doesn't believe in God, the devil is with me at every turn. In the dark of night she comes to me too, with her sharp tongue and steely eyes, and reminds me of who I am. I am what Irina made me and nothing else. Sometimes I think I really am the devil's disciple, toying with fate, playing God. Even though the devil is gone now, locked up in a cage of metal and glass, I've come to take her place, casting judgment on the innocent, taking the lives of those who've crossed me.   
  
It never used to bother, the killing, but now I feel as though I can never escape the stench of death. It's with me wherever I go, invading my senses like a fine perfume, lingering in my hair and on my clothes and in my mind. I feel like Lady McBeth, ever scrubbing the blood from my hands, trying to get clean. But I know that no matter how many times I reinvent myself, apologize for the lives I've taken, tried to do right by those I've hurt--I'll never be clean. There's no absolution for a man who's done what I've done, no redemption. If there really is a Purgatory I'll surely live out my days there, ever paying for the sins of my life.  
  
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Lately though, I've started dreaming again and it's always the same dream, every night, haunting my sleep. When the ghosts of my past leave me alone to shake and shiver with regret, she comes to me with soft eyes and soothing hands. In my dreams she pushes the hair from my brow and kisses my cheeks and tells me it will all be okay. And when I wake up in the morning everything is okay, because with her gentle touch and comforting words I can make it through the day, survive the ghosts that never let me forget.   
  
I've never told anyone who she is, this guardian angel of mine who guards my dreams and keeps my sanity safe. I've never told anyone because she isn't real; just like Mr. Sark she's a figment of my imagination, a dream woman I've conjured up when I can't face what I really am. But that doesn't mean she isn't based in reality, that there isn't a flesh and blood woman I want her to be.  
  
Since the day I met Sydney Bristow it's always been her. Maybe it's that she looks like Irina or maybe it's that she's beautiful in her own right, all legs and deep, dark eyes and a mouth made to be kissed. Or maybe it's her determination and brains and backbone of steel. Or maybe it's the hidden vulnerability in her dark eyes, the softer side she won't let anyone see. I saw it of course, the night she lay on a wet floor beneath me, every inch of her body pressed against mine. I saw the fear and helplessness and weakness in her eyes and it took everything in me not to take advantage. Not my usual behavior, but then again, nothing is normal around Sydney Bristow.   
  
We're the same, Sydney and I, considering what we do for a living, but despite the men she kills, Sydney Bristow is everything I'm not. She's good and moral, loving and caring. People don't fear her, they respect her; they don't ask her not to kill them when she enters a room. Everything Sydney Bristow is, all the goodness and love and strength of her heart is right there in her eyes for anyone to see, and when I looked into her eyes that night all I wanted to do was drown myself in them. I wanted to take a piece of her for myself, hoping that maybe a little of her goodness would rub off on me. No such luck though. The devil made me in her image and I can't escape that, because hard as I try I'm forever what Irina made me.   
  
It's ironic, but this image of Sydney Bristow that I created, is my guardian angel. A woman who hates me is the one keeping me sane. She patrols the edges of my mind, protecting it from the demons that threaten my sanity, protecting me from myself. It doesn't matter that she isn't there when I wake up, that she's only a figment of my imagination, because in the deep part of the night, when I'm at my weakest, she's there to keep my safe. Every man has his moment of weakness, but I have Sydney to protect me from mine.  
  
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Please, please, please respond!!! 


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